


Soul (I Ain't Up for Debating)

by euhemeria



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [60]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Confrontations, Dubious Ethics, Gen, Unrequited rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 00:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18457313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euhemeria/pseuds/euhemeria
Summary: For an instant, Moira wonders if Angela's certainty that resurrection tech will fail is born of experience, but surely not.  Angela would never do something unauthorized, particularly not so large as human experimentation.Would she?Or,Between Overwatch's fall and the Recall, Moira tries to make Angela see reason.





	Soul (I Ain't Up for Debating)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sealfarts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealfarts/gifts).



> just a little pre-recall thing. in which moira is evil, and angela is Tired
> 
> also very obvious disclaimer that moiras beliefs are not my own... since she is, u know, a villain, she expresses some opinions i dont agree with. lmao
> 
> for mariel bc i love her

If Moira can say nothing else positive about Angela Ziegler, she can say, at least, that the woman is _stubborn._ From most people, such would not be a compliment, but Moira does mean it that way; intellect, Angela was born with—and, in Moira’s opinion, squanders—and her altruism is worthless in Moira’s eyes, but her stubbornness?  That is something that has gotten her far, has been a driving force in her research and in her career, has gotten her to where she is now.  Oh, it might have infuriated Moira when they worked together, might infuriate Moira still, as Angela refuses to progress, and refuses to acknowledge Moira’s work as being in any way legitimate, but it is admirable nonetheless.

Moira, after all, is stubborn too.  She needs to see that mirrored, in a rival, needs for them to be as stubborn, as _persistent_ as she, in order to maintain such a relationship.  All the greatest scientific innovations were born of rivalry, from the works of Socrates to Newton, and so Angela’s stubbornness performs a valuable function, in spurring Moira onwards, in guaranteeing that she cannot rest, must always push her work forwards in order to keep pace, to prove herself the better scientist, to play off Angela’s innovations and to find something she missed, something better, to win.

Both of them are bettered for it. 

So when Moira says that Angela is stubborn, she means it as a compliment, as well as an observation.  It is important to her, that stubbornness, is integral to her own career.

Stubbornness is what brings Moira here, tonight.  Stubbornness, and intel from Sombra.

Above Moira, if she cared to look, hang countless stars.  They are, of course, the same stars as above home in Oasis, but there are _more_ of them to be seen, here, with no light pollution or citibiome generated clouds to obscure them.  Of course, Moira does not stop to look up at the sky above her, having neither the time nor inclination to do so, merely clutches her jacket tighter around herself as it flutters in the desert breeze.

At night, with the thin ozone here, it gets cold fast.  Moira would never say as much but it is chilly, and she could have better prepared herself for the weather, would have, were it not for the fact that Angela never seemed to need a coat, in all the years they worked together.  It would not do to appear weak.

Ahead of her, the breeze moves the flaps of tents, too.  It is not so strong as to threaten the little mock city, but it is quite the contrast to Oasis, where even the smallest breeze is carefully engineered to somehow better the city.

Not that Moira cares about the citibiome project, particularly.  The brief walk from the transport ship that dropped her here to these tents is the longest she has spent outdoors in well over a month, as being a Minister affords her apartments in the same complex that houses her lab, for maximum productivity and convenience.  Still, she has learned _something_ from el-Khoury’s seemingly endless reports, at bimonthly ministerial meetings, and now she feels that anything less than controlling nature is reckless, and lacking.

But Angela has always been a little reckless.  Not in the way that Moira wishes she would be, where she might ignore the ethical guidelines that hold her back, allow her experiments to get messy, and truly reach her full potential, but in the sense that she has a tendency to risk her own safety for the sake of lesser people.

Reckless, and stubborn, and both that recklessness and stubbornness have brought her here, to a little refugee camp in the middle of the desert, full of the wretched, the needy, the people who, frankly, ought to be beneath the notice of either of them.

It is not that Moira does not have pity, but Angela was meant for greater things, meant to be not _here,_ but a mere thirty minutes aware, in Oasis.  Many people can heal the sick, but only Angela has the brilliant mind she does, has the stubbornness to put it to use, the ability to truly thrust humanity forwards.

Only one woman could be Moira’s rival.

If that woman is here, in a tent, wasting her life—well, then Moira must be here, too, for the good of both of them, must give her a thorough talking to, such that she reconsiders this path she has set herself upon, and what a disservice she does to humanity as a whole by wasting her talents on the few.

From the shadows painting the outside of her tent, easily identifiable by the Swiss flag it bears, Moira can see that Angela is awake, that she is standing over a desk, of sorts.  Good.  This is easier, if Moira does not have to wake her, is more clearly a courtesy call.

Courtesy has never been Moira’s forte, however, and in the time it takes her to coalesce into being inside Angela’s tent, she finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

_How fascinating._ It seems Angela is more adaptable than Moira thought.  A good sign.

“Is that any way to greet a fellow scientist, Angela?” she chides.  Oh, she could commend Angela for having finally abandoned her stubborn code of nonaggression, but what would be the point?  Her rival never has responded well to praise—or, not to Moira’s praise, at least.

“Calling you a fellow would be dishonest of me,” says Angela, none too kindly, even as she holsters her weapon.  The movement is fluid, and Moira realizes, then, that the safety was never off.

Perhaps Angela has not learned anything, after all.

(But perhaps that is to Moira’s advantage, because it means that Angela has not yet learned to fear Moira, to see what a threat she can be, thinks of her still as the disgraced woman she overshadowed, all those years, and not the deadly weapon Moira has morphed herself into.)

“No need to be rude,” Moira tells her, “I’m here because I’m worried about you.”

“Oh _are_ you now?” Angela does not look persuaded in the slightest, arms folding a cross her chest, chin tilting stubbornly.  “Why don’t I believe that?”

With this movement, Angela’s face is brought further into the light, and Moira realizes, suddenly, how tired she looks, her hair out of place and bags beneath her eyes.  Her clothes are wrinkled, likely slept in, and she is not wearing any make-up.  Angela _ought_ to believe Moira, because this is concerning, is disconcerting.  Why is she wasting her time bleeding herself dry here, when she could be doing so much more elsewhere?  Why has she let herself go?

“I can respect your skepticism,” Moira tells her, as if it were not Angela, of the two of them, who is more credulous, “But I do mean it.  What _are_ you doing out here?”

“I’m _helping people,_ Moira.  I know that it’s a foreign concept to you, but some of us would like to make the world better.”

“Would you now?”  There are plenty of ways a mind like Angela’s could better the world.  Wrapping sprained ankles is not one of them.  “You’re doing that… how, exactly?  These people are no one, Angela.  The world is no better off if you save one of them.”

“Every person matters,” Angela tells her, all righteous indignance, as if it were not she who would let millions die for… what?  Moira does not know.  For vanity, perhaps, for the feeling of moral superiority this work grants her.  “The world _is_ better, because I’ve helped them.”

“How do you do it?” Moira muses aloud, “Lie to yourself like that?”  Angela starts to say something in response to that, but Moira ignores what she is saying, speaks over her, “Do you think these people are going to have better lives, because you’ve stepped in and fixed their broken arm, pulled shrapnel out of them, cured their sepsis?”  It is hard not to scoff at the thought.  “They’re still going to be refugees, still going to want for food and shelter, long after you’ve left and forgotten them.  You haven’t saved anyone since you abandoned researching.  All _you_ do,” she pokes Angela in the chest as she says it, just below one collarbone, “Is prolong their suffering.”

That does get to Angela, Moira can tell, rattles her, because rather than responding calmly, rationally, like their discussion calls for, she reacts in anger, makes an ad hominem attack, “And what are _you_ doing, Moira?” she demands, “It’s you who put them here.  You and your ilk at Oasis.”

“I assure you that I had no part in that decision,” and, really, how naïve of Angela to assume that she would.  Genetics, Immigration, and Urban Development are three different Ministries.  If the other ministers decide that people of a certain level of educational attainment are not welcome in their city, if they decide to revoke the work visas of a few hundred laborers, what has that to do with Moira?  She has no role in city planning, and no interest besides.  All she cares is that her own Ministry receives the funds it needs.  “But if it helps you sleep any better at night to think that of me, so be it.”

A cheap shot.  Anyone could see that Angela is not sleeping.

“What keeps me up at night,” Angela tells her, cold, now, all heat gone from her anger, “Is people like _you_.”

“So you say,” Moira waves a hand dismissively, “But I know the stuff of your nightmares.”  When they were still colleagues, Angela would fall asleep in the office, sometimes, would jerk awake with a scream or a name on her lips.  _Responsibility_ haunts Angela, the people whom she has let down, the lives she could not save, and worse, the ones she was capable of saving, but failed to.  “If you really wanted to stop feeling so powerless, you would be back in a lab.”

At that, Angela flinches.  _Curious._

“I don’t need to be in a lab to make a difference,” there is a rasp to her voice, now, that was not there before.

“No,” Moira says, placatingly, as if she were talking to a child, “Of course you don’t.  But you could be doing so much more, couldn’t you?  Your nanobiotics have saved more lives than your hands ever will.”

What can Angela say to that?  It is the truth.  In a decade, she could not save as many lives as her work does in a single week.  Both of them know it.

Still, she tries to argue, stubborn as ever, “And they will _continue_ to save people, whether I’m in the field or… not.”  On the last word, she hesitates again.  Not is not the word she was going to say.  Or what? 

“That may be so,” Moira says, “But there is so much more you could be doing, and we both know it.  How many more people must die before you realize that?  You were close, with your resurrection technology—I remember.  You almost defeated death, you could—”

“ _No_!” Angela stops her, then.  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, because your actual _medical_ knowledge is shaky at best,” Moira wonders when Angela will stop holding over her the fact that she has both an M.D. _and_ a Ph.D., “But the resurrection project won’t work.  There are some parts of life that medical science can’t yet replicate.”

“How would you know?”  Moira asks her.  “You never tried it,” Angela moves to open her mouth, but Moira cuts her off, “Not on people, anyway.  What do your models failing _really_ mean, compared to proper laboratory testing?”

There it is again, that flinch.  “I don’t need to be in that sort of environment to know the merit of my work,” Angela tells her, and Moira wonders, _did she try it?_   That might explain her talking around the issue, her reluctance.

But surely not.  Angela would never do something unauthorized, particularly not so large as human experimentation.  Would she?

“Did you try it?” she cannot help but ask.  Before she is anything else, she is a scientist, is curious.

“No,” Angela tells her, and this is cool, confident, either the truth or a very, very comfortable lie, and Angela is not a talented liar.  _Curious._

“Then how can you know it wouldn’t work?  Maybe _Overwatch_ did not have enough funding for you, or the hospital you went to afterwards, but I think you’ll like Oasis far more.  The laboratories are better equipped than you could dream.”

“I’ll _never_ work in Oasis,” Angela tells her, and with such certainty that Moira believes that _she_ believes it, at the very least, “No matter what their facilities have to offer.  Nothing is worth the price of human suffering they’ve exacted.”

“Still stuck on that?” Moira asks her, and it should not be a surprise, that Angela would be so stubborn, but it is disappointing, nonetheless.  “I assure you,” says she, moving just a fraction closer to Angela, and doing her best to _sound_ reassuring, as well, “We’re done expanding.  Nothing else will come of that _and_ , if you were to come on as a minister, you could always propose an outreach program.”

“I’m done making deals with devils,” Angela tells her, “Overwatch was bad enough.”

“A devil, am I?”  _Quaint,_ Angela’s adherence to religious imagery.  Unfortunately, it is not at all effective on Moira, who believes in nothing that cannot be proven.  “Be that as it may, you must admit that the potential good your work could do, if you developed it with us, far outweighs the price.  What are a few hundred lives, in the face of immortality for all?”

Angela spits a curse at her, then, one Moira does not understand, German, she assumes, but she knows that Angela has been creative with her use of Hebrew in the past—a language just as dated and useless as the ethical guidelines Angela allows to hold her back.  Fitting.

“I will _never_ ,” says Angela, a threat and a promise both, “Work with the likes of you.”

“A pity,” Moira says, and it _is_ , is one of the great tragedies of their time, that one of the brightest minds would willingly limit herself as Angela does, would allow herself to be hamstrung by religion and morality.  “You’ve always had such _potential_ , and it’s wasted by your antiquated beliefs.”

“We all have an obligation to be stewards of the world.  It isn’t my fault you’ve abandoned yours,” Angela tells her, “Now leave.  I have work to be doing.”

With that, she turns her back, and Moira thinks, _It would be so easy_ , so simple, to strike her down right now, to sap her life with the biotic grasp, stealing just enough of it to put her at the cusp of death, and take her, near-lifeless, back to Oasis.  So simple to bring her back, and to use her own technology, to revive her in a lab, to hold her there, and demand she work.

But no, Angela must come willingly, for that same stubbornness Moira so admires would work against Talon’s aims, in such a situation.  Angela would do no work at all, if Moira tried to force her, would spout nonsense, or say nothing, and no threat could move her.

A pity that she is so unwilling to be persuaded, to see the logic behind Moira’s words.  Why should the lives of a few people stand in the way of the future of humanity?  Angela passed arithmetic, Moira knows she did, and she must realize that it is an easy decision, to choose the lives of billions over a few hundred, particularly a few hundred who are miserable already.

Yet she will not be moved, because she fears the consequences, fears being seen as anything less than perfect, anything less than righteous—and because she fears failure, too, fears the guilt that would linger, or the realization that she is not so earth-shatteringly brilliant as some have claimed, that she has limits like the rest of them.

(Or perhaps what she fears is success, that in creating life she would prove that her faith has been misplaced, that there is nothing greater than man.  No god, no heaven above them, only this world they live in, the hell she has seen and the devils that surround her.  If that were so, then what is it for, all her self-imposed suffering?  How foolish.  How simpleminded.  How beneath a mind like hers.)

“A pity,” Moira tells her, “But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve chosen to limit yourself like this.”

Disappointed, yes, but this is always how Angela has been, principled to a fault.

No response from Angela, even though she must feel it when Moira looms closer, uses her height to look at the work beneath her—and it _is_ beneath her, in every sense, appears to be a list of inventory for the camp, a budget, some attempt at making things work.  A secretary could do that—Angela truly is wasted, here.

Well, there is nothing for it, no changing her mind.  Moira should just leave now, really, because she knows, rationally, that nothing she adds will help her case.  But she cannot stand it, this feeling of losing, that somehow, by refusing to even try to disprove her, Angela is dismissing her as an unworthy rival.

She will make this hurt, will make this sting, will guarantee Angela remembers her, and thinks upon her just as bitterly as she thinks upon Angela.  Just one more barb, and she will fade into the night, will leave Angela with no chance to retort, and only her final words to think upon.

“No,” says she, “I shouldn’t be surprised at all.  You can’t help it,” Moira reaches out to the point where, as she knows from years of having caught glimpses of it in the lab, Angela’s spinal implant begins, “You’re _spineless_.”

**Author's Note:**

> sorry i went ham just to make one pun but u know. it has to be like this
> 
> and again, lest anyone @ me... moiras views are not my own... gotta disclaim that shit now 
> 
> also yeah i died finding a 1d title for this fic. its from wolves, on their album made in the am. really used my last braincells finding smtg that would fit
> 
> lmk ur thoughts <3


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